Distributed Hierarchical Control of Quadrotor UAVs: Design and Experimental Validation

In this brief, we provide an overview on the design of distributed hierarchical control algorithms for Quadrotor UAVs together with some baseline experiment results. The control design and experimental implementation in this paper are based on the use of the Crazyflie 2.0 quadrotor UAV produced by Bitcraze. The main objective is to design practically implementable distributed hierarchical control algorithms for coordinated formation flying of UAVs and to implement them using a number of nano Crazyflie quadrotors. The proposed distributed hierarchical strategy and its experimental validation provide a useful design guideline for applications of multiple UAVs in real situations.